King County deputy Patrick "K.C." Saulet has been fired for threatening to arrest me last summer, when I was photographing several officers on a downtown street corner, and then lying to investigators about the incident, says King County sheriff John Urquhart.

The termination is effective today.

"You have a constitutional right to photograph the police," Sheriff Urquhart asserted in a phone interview with me today. Threatening to arrest a citizen for legally taking photos of cops while on public property, he added, "is a constitutional violation, as far as I am concerned."